Leaked Slingbox M1 Time-Shifting Over-The-Air TV Tuner

The PlayStation Vue streaming TV service recently lit a fire under Sling who now is faced with stiff competition.

Recently leaked plans for Slings new Air TV box have been appearing on the Internet. Sling is looking at soon releasing a small box that would allow subscribers to attach an over the air antenna and stream local channels to Sling compatible streaming devices like Roku, Amazon Fire TV and others. (Sorry Apple TV Owners, Sling still not available on your platform.)

Bypassing content licensing, Sling TV may soon cram customer’s local television channels directly into the company’s pay TV service via a small set-top box and antenna.

This little box from Sling is called the Air TV. Some have even compared the Air TV to a DIY Aereo. It's actually more like an HDHomeRun and for those cord cutters that don't want to subscribe to Sling this little box is available now and does the very same thing. You can use it to record, pause, playback and stream live TV to any computer and also to Roku.

What the Air TV M1 from Sling will do is make it easier for subscribers to add local TV channels to their streaming package making it more worthy of the $20 a month subscription fee.

Some of these local channels like ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Fox offer many popular TV series and other shows. They are premium channels and will be a welcome addition for many cord cutters.

Roku has also been rumored to be working on an box that could include some type of OTA tuner. They have already developed a hybrid Roku 4 box for Now IPTV a British company that also offers regional OTA channels from the included tuner as well.

OTA TV tuners could be the the future must have feature for cord cutters and could well start another race among manufactures to add tuners and software to their devices. This could also be another nail in the coffin of traditional cable TV companies as more and more people choose to leave conventional paid TV for cord cutting devices which can save them a large sum of money every month.
Also See: Best Public and Private Roku Channels Exposed